Virtual Book Tour + #Giveaway: Teardown by William Campbell Powell @GoddessFish

TEARDOWN

William Campbell Powell

GENRE: LGBT+ Romance

BLURB:

Growing up in a dead-end, Thames Valley town like Marden Combe, Kai knows there’s no escape without a lot of talent, hard work—and luck.

Two weeks before the Clayton Paul Blues Band plans to set out on tour to Germany, their singer quits, and drummer Kai takes matters in hand. With bandmates Jake and Jamie, they recruit a talented new singer—the enigmatic Dominique—as the new face of the band and set out on the road to Berlin in a rickety white van.

Dogged by mishaps and under-rehearsed, the band stumbles through their first shows, zig-zagging between chaos and brilliance. But as the first gig in Berlin draws near, the band begins to gel. They’re clicking with their audience, and even the stone-hearted Kai starts to crumble under the spell, first of Dom and then…of Lars.

As the end of the tour approaches, Kai must make hard choices. Dom? But she’s keeping a dark secret. Lars? Not after the acrimony of their last parting. The band? Or will that dream crumble too?

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Excerpt:

The bus stank of commuters. It wasn’t like a night bus, granted, but the mix of sweat and cheap scent—and the pungency of diesel—was another reminder of how much I hated Marden Combe.

A Thames Valley town like every other Thames Valley town, Marden Combe had a posh, blingy bit, where the bankers, footballers, and celebrity chefs lived. The rest ran the spectrum from dilapidated through demolished to barely affordable modern rabbit hutches. The old town centre was closing down, and the new shopping centre was gridlock hell.

The bus lurched and swung left, past a school named for a long-dead parliamentarian. Or possibly a royalist. I ought to know; it had been my old school till I’d turned sixteen. But it had all seemed irrelevant to the more immediate problem of not getting picked on for being different. There were a dozen ways and more to be different, whether it was for being too ugly, too geeky, too slow on the uptake, too shy, too dark, not dark enough, having a funny accent, or a fundy religion, or being neurodivergent, being too posh, being too poor, liking the wrong music, or football team, or playing oddball sports, or using last year’s tech; not liking girls, not liking boys, not liking either, liking both. Plus others, plus combinations. By more than one marker, I was weird, and I hadn’t always kept my head down. But there’d definitely been no bullying at Sir Long-Dead-Parliamentarian School. Or Royalist, as the case may be. Oh no.

That didn’t come close to summing up the suffocating, hope-crushing, soul-sucking, shit-brown hole that is Marden Combe. I needed to escape.

If I had a plan, it was that music would save me…

Interview with William Campbell Powell

What is your favorite part of the book?

Hi – and thank you for hosting me on this blog tour.

To pick one part of Teardown as the favourite part, that’s tricky. Kai has some deep-seated baggage to let go of, but there’s also choice about which future to embrace as well.

There’s a scene where Kai unequivocally rejects one of the choices, but the final cutting of ties to the past together with the irrevocable embracing of the choice for the future happens right at the end of the book. It was a scene that materialised really late on in edits, working with Elizabetta at NineStar. It was particularly satisfying to write, as it brought together themes that were already embedded in the book. I don’t think it’s too spoilery to identify one theme as rivers to bear away baggage, and the other as swans to bear opportunities.

Does your book have a lesson? Moral?

I’m wary of proclaiming that Teardown has a moral. But there’s one snippet that I hope will resonate with readers:

“First, he said, ‘Don’t let them put you in one of their boxes’. “Then, he said, ‘If you don’t like the boxes on offer, make one that’s just right for yourself’.”

Are your characters based off real people or did they all come entirely from your imagination?

My characters come from real people, mostly, but filtered. Different names, of course, and sometimes the characters are a composite of multiple people. Ricky is a direct lift of a hugely charismatic singer in a band I used to watch when I was discovering the pub rock scene in Birmingham (England).

Kai is me. Changed, of course. But Kai’s obsession with technology, with being in control, and Kai’s frustration at having a ‘pure’ voice, rather than a blues voice (to quote just three examples) – those are my own traits. Possibly exaggerated for effect, but perhaps not.

Of all the characters you have created, which is your favorite and why?

My favourite character? Hmm. I’m very fond of Neale, the fiddle player. I created him to be a source of conflict – old, where the others are mostly twenty-something. Politically very incorrect. What surprised me is how he came to build quite a rapport with Kai. He and Kai get to banter quite a bit, too, and that was fun to write.

What character in your book are you least likely to get along with?

Characters that I’d find hard to get along with? Well, there’s one out-and-out unscrupulous club owner that I’d cross the street to avoid, but he’s a bit part, really. But the character I have in mind is more covert a villain than that. She’s another club owner, and she’s got the instant rapport that all good barkeepers possess. Based on that, I think she’d probably totally deceive me. Beneath that sociable façade, there’s a well-hidden secret – if I discovered it (but why would I?) it would be instant dislike.

What would the main character in your book have to say about you?

Kai and I would probably get along just fine – there are a lot of shared interests and characteristics – until it came to sorting out who takes charge. Kai was quick to appraise Neale, and would probably use similar words about me. Substitute my bass guitar for Neale’s fiddle and our conversation would go:

“Oh, yes. I’ll be able to fit me fiddle around whatever you want. And I can use a mixing desk, too, if I’m not playing.”

An instrument that we didn’t need, and a skill I already had in spades…

Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?

I like the idea of writing a series of connected works, the notion of having a set of characters that people will pay money to read more of. I’ve certainly supported with my book-buying cash plenty of other authors who’ve written series. I love reading them.

So I’ve tried my hand at writing books that allow for a sequel, and it hasn’t worked out. My first published book – Expiration Day – was a standalone, but I did try to write another book set in the same universe. It didn’t go well. So it’s sitting in a dusty folder where it won’t ever see the light of day.

The reality is that I naturally write for closure. All loose ends tied up. Balance restored.

I have plenty of ideas for new books. But they don’t relate to the books I’ve written. They have different themes, they’re in different genres – and they’re stacked up years into the future, standalones every one. Those are the ones I feel motivated to write.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

William lives in a small Buckinghamshire village in England. By night he writes speculative, historical, crime and other fiction. His debut novel, EXPIRATION DAY, was published by Tor Teen in 2014 and won the 2015 Hal Clement Award for better than half-decent science in a YA novel—the citation actually says "Excellence in Children's Science Fiction Literature".

William’s latest novel - TEARDOWN - was published 10th December 2024, by NineStar Press in the US; it is an LGBT+ romance/road-trip.

His short fiction has appeared in DreamForge, Metastellar, Abyss & Apex and other outlets.

By day he writes software for a living and in the twilight he sings tenor, plays guitar and writes songs.

Connect with William Campbell Powell on his websites: William Campbell Powell & TEARDOWN as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and BlueSky

My comps for the book:

The novel combines elements of LGBTQIA+ romance with Road Trip fiction, and - with its focus on music - might sit alongside Taylor Jenkins Reid’s ‘Daisy Jones and the Six’ (2016) or Dawnie Walton’s ‘The Final Revival of Opal & Nev’ (2022), or - with its focus on (Kai's) gender-ambiguity and relationships - near Camille Perry’s ‘When Katie Met Cassidy’ (2018) or Beth O’Leary’s ‘The Road Trip’ (2022).

One USP: The book is about a band and contains original songs, for which I have created demos – see/listen: On his website

 

Giveaway:

$20 Amazon/BN GC

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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